You can’t properly call it sleep
from one pole to the next the whole thing at the same distance
dreams leaning over the side
staring down into the crater of displaced objects
where they are calmly doing their rounds
they stare back unflinching
and I ask myself: how many things have already left the horizon again
my orbit
have taken on a life of their own?
My suitcase was checked in
I checked it in, abandoned it myself
and it has landed somewhere
where I didn’t land
its contents, the prize, have become plunder
flogged, blown
I sit upright
no matter whether it’s morning, afternoon or the middle of the night
daylight will embroil me in circumstances inevitable in this time zone
out there
there is an out there
but am I still complete enough?
Have I got my wherewithal?
the odds and bobs
glasses
pen
and pad
tickets
money
passport
and keys
Talents?
For now I’ve cancelled the idea of “out there”
to be and let be
I sit upright
I rasp the slime upwards until I catch hold of it.
With two fingers I haul its thread up out of my throat, out of my body.
Hanging to it like a charm bracelet are:
a heart, my love, a bottle, a house, a coin, a horseshoe, a six, a seven,
a shamrock, a fish, a dice, a thirteen, a bell, a padlock, a key, a hammer,
a star, a moon, the sun –
and at the very end a brush whose bristles pull out the remains, the last couple of lumps.
Clean at last. Empty at last.
I drink a large glass of water and wait. What had stuck in and
kept me worried is hanging in front of me and drying like old vegetables, desiccated fruit.
The water finds its way. I let it, a last trickle.
A last gas, a flatus.
Empty at last.
Empty at last.
Me: my shell.